Carved turnips for Hop tu Naa, an October 31st festival that takes place on the Isle of Mann. Photo credit: Jane Oates, Wikimedia Commons.
Halloween is here, and with the fall festivities comes a lot of pumpkins! Pumpkin carving for Halloween derived from the ancient Irish tradition of carving faces into turnips, beets, or potatoes to ward off unfriendly spirits visiting from beyond the veil between worlds on the night when it is thinnest, October 31st, or the festival of Samhain. Today, people carve pumpkins into all kinds of creative faces and carvings to celebrate Halloween, and indicate to Trick-or-Treaters that a house has candy to give!
After the spookiest night of the year is over, though, the question of what to do with the pumpkin remains. Do you toss it in the garbage? Recycle it somehow?
Here’s a quick guide to some great ideas!
Save the Seeds!
Pumpkin seeds. Photo credit: Dmitry Makeev, CCASA 4.0
Birds visiting your back yard at this time of year are always looking for extra food to help them weather the winter, whether they’re travelling south to warmer climes, or staying put to hold down the fort.
Pumpkin seeds are a good source of extra nutrition for birds, so saving them for our feathered friends is a great option! You can also roast and eat them yourself.
Composted Carvings
You can add your carved pumpkin to your own compost, or compost them the same way you would any other food waste. If your container can’t accommodate the full-sized pumpkin, you can cut it into smaller pieces to make sure it all fits.
The City of Edmonton also hosts a Pumpkin Smash, a family friendly event hosted at Compost School. Composting doesn’t have to be boring!
Image credit: Nicubunu, Wikimedia Commons. CCASA 3.0
Feeder Feast
If you want to get creative with your pumpkin’s remains in your yard, you can cut it in half to form two bowls, and hang them by string to form a bird feeder. Simply cut holes in the bottom to make sure the contents don’t get moldy, and fill with bird seeds to attract birds! Find a tutorial about how to do this here.
Be Wildlife-Wise
A doe eating a pumpkin. Photo credit: Andrew Penney Photography on Flikr. All rights reserved.
You may have seen posts on social media about leaving your pumpkin in forested areas for wildlife to eat, but this isn’t a practice we recommend. As a land trust, our conservation lands are natural areas that are open to the public for everyone to enjoy, and we have a responsibility to keep these special places as natural as possible. If you’ve been to any of our conservation lands before, you may have noticed signs telling people not to leave bird feeders for wildlife on our lands.
Similarly, we do not allow visitors to leave other food sources for wildlife on our lands, and this includes pumpkins. This is for a few reasons:
Adding human food sources encourages a reliance on them
Feeding wildlife can result in human-animal conflict
Rotting pumpkins can serve as a disease vector between the multiple different species that will be feeding from it
Wanting to help our nonhuman neighbours comes from a place of kindness, especially with the weather getting colder, but they have been here for hundreds of thousands of years, and are adapted to harsh winters and dramatic seasonal changes.
You can support wildlife by supporting local nature conservation. More than anything, wild animals need spaces where they can feed on their natural food sources, raise young, and live safely. If you can’t contribute money, you can volunteer at events that focus on maintaining the ecological integrity of a natural area.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween, from the EALT Staff Team!
